Monday, April 20, 2015

It is not often that you get to do a truly side-by-side comparison of two new tools, but Gloria Bell (@gloriabell) and I (@twelsonrossman) got the perfect opportunity to do just that with Meerkat and Periscope at the Philly Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference (#PhillyETE) last week.

We used both apps at various times throughout the conference, but at the Day 2 Keynote, we did an actual side-by-side comparison.

The reason we wanted to try live streaming at the conference is a no brainer, this has the potential to be a great marketing tool . The ability to reach more people with good content, is really exciting when you run a lot of events like we do.

Here are the pros and cons of each with our “Bake-off” winner (and the reasons why) below.

Meerkat

Pros: Easy to set up an account

Easy to give the stream a name / title

Ability to tweet comments in the stream

Can schedule a stream

Ability to save broadcast

Can target smaller, more direct audience because no auto link to Twitter

Cons: Cannot zoom in or increase volume

Need a built-in audience to gain viewers

Lack of direct connection to tweet the stream makes it harder to gain audience

Hard to manage the chat and hold the phone

Need a good cellular or Wi-fi connection to make it work

Hard to understand the metrics for viewership during the broadcast and post

Lack of documentation on how to use it

Really need a tripod for a good recording

No post-viewing metrics

Periscope

Pros:

Setting up the account was easy

Ability to save the broadcast

Connecting to and broadcasting via Twitter was easy

Ability to tweet comments and likes in the stream, but can’t easily add

other Twitter names in the tweet

Easy to “title” - just like a tweet

Direct link to Twitter makes for a larger audience but also more possibility for spam

comments

Cons:

Can’t switch between Twitter accounts

Can only have one account associated with the app

Need a good cellular or Wi-fi connection to make it work

Hard to manage the chat and hold the phone

Lack of documentation on how to use it

Few metrics - post view metrics much easier to see on an iPad

Really need a tripod for a good recording

There are a lot of limitations with both apps and we are hopeful there are more features coming that will address the issues we outlined above. Both seem to be good, fairly easy-to-use tools for livestreaming, especially at events. For right now we give Periscope the edge due to its seamless integration with Twitter. This feature alone will make it an easier-to-use social marketing tool.

It is a slight edge, though. Even with the limitations, we see these apps as a great tool for events and smaller conferences with small budgets. The video and audio quality will not be great, but these apps will allow for broader distribution of events.